


ribs are the cage of a wild heart

by lightningstars



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M, Multi, WHOO BOY THESE KIDS?? I LOVE HTEM SM, also anyways arthur is bisexual merlin is gay and gwaine is absolutely without a doubt pan and trans, ughh this is a mess does this make sense?? im so sorry you both deserve something better than me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 20:15:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8814742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningstars/pseuds/lightningstars
Summary: He thinks a lot about the fact that he won’t exist after a while. That someday people will not know who he was, what his favourite ice cream flavor was, which was his comfort hat - none of it. He thinks its beyond terrible, cruel really and then he wondered when the universe was ever kind.He thinks about this when he hears the door close. Or well. Almost close. Maybe that was the part that bothered him the most, that the door was never closed. Arthur I’m sorry but I just can’t, she said. After a heartbeat she quietly got up and left the room calling I’ll see you around over her shoulder. Arthur sat on his bed for a long time afterwards. He traced the outline of the ring in his hand, and thought about the fact that he won’t exist.+also known as that au where arthur is a writer who's heart bleeds and merlin is a painter who holds him tight enough that arthur feels his ribcage stitch back together. they're young and they're trying to survive and gwaine is done with both of their shit.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Asteraa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asteraa/gifts).



> an;; because i wish i could explain to lanna and elijah how much i love them and how im dreadfully sorry that they have to put up with me. its a little past two a.m., cold, my eyes are dropping and this is a mess and so am i and most of all i wish i was better for you.

He thinks a lot about the fact that he won’t exist after a while. That someday people will not know who he was, what his favourite ice cream flavor was, which was his comfort hat - none of it. He thinks its beyond terrible, cruel really and then he wondered when the universe was ever kind.

He thinks about this when he hears the door close. Or well. Almost close. Maybe that was the part that bothered him the most, that the door was never closed. _Arthur I’m sorry but I just can’t_ , she said. After a heartbeat she quietly got up and left the room calling _I’ll see you around_ over her shoulder. Arthur sat on his bed for a long time afterwards. He traced the outline of the ring in his hand, and thought about the fact that he won’t exist.

When he finally gets up Arthur sees that shes taken everything that wasn’t his. Her extra hair ties, nearly every blanket, half of the cooking utensils and even the washing machine. His dirty clothes sit in front of the spot staring back at him. He supposes he should be thankful that his clothes are still with him, and the t.v. and couch and food. But he still feels as if he was carved out, hollowed and then burned.

Arthur picks up his cell phone (her charger that he always used is gone Arthur notes) and calls Elyan. “She said no” he says and he feels a part of him falling, as if he was the Titanic who just got hit by the glacier. 

“Holy fuck” Elyan says ten minutes later as he walks into Arthur’s apartment with Gwaine. Arthur looks up and it dawns upon him what he probably looks like. But he realizes that he also just doesn’t care anymore so he just shrugs and goes back to tracing the hardwood floor. There is little else to do. He feels as if there is a bullet that went straight through him. He feels his entire heart leaking out into a pool of blood that she would step through. 

Arthur doesn’t go anywhere for two weeks. Elyan and Gwaine take turns visiting him and forcing him to eat a meal twice a day. But then again Elyan is a teacher while Gwaine is still in college to study space and they are all poor so the meals are just bags of Cheetos. He thinks about the fact that she used to suck on the Cheetos to soften them before eating.

One day he gets up to get the mail. A part of him hopes to see a letter from her even though she hated writing anything by hand. He sees the apartment across the hall with lights on and people and illogically his heart raises the slightest bit. In the second in the hall he imagines that she came back and rented the apartment across, or that she was pulling a prank on him or something ridiculous. But no one steps out and Arthur distinctly hears a man laughing. He goes back inside and sits on the floor.

He meets the man-across-the-hall-who-isn’t- _her_ two days later when his new washing machine arrives. Gwaine goes down to get it and pay because Arthur hasn’t been at work in nearly a month and he hadn’t showered or shaved either. His phone than starts buzzing and he lets it ring without moving before remembering that no one else could pick it up for him. 

“Hello? Hi yes I’m- Jesus fuck man be careful- sorry I’m Merlin- no don’t that’ll no dammit just stop moving I’m talking to him right now wait for fucks sake” the other voice says. “Hey I’m back again sorry. I’m Merlin the guy who lives across the hall from you and I’m trapped in an elevator with your mate Gug- sorry what was your name?” he asks and distinctly Arthur can hear Gwaine shouting out his name. “- With your mate Gwaine and this machine isn’t moving or anything and we’ve been trying to get out for half an hour now and this is getting out of hand so would you come down and help or something before I kill him?”

Arthur blinks, “what?”

“Come to the elevator now” he summarizes then hangs up.

He considers not going down to help them but he ultimately decides that he misses having clean clothes that smell vaguely like strawberries. The elevator doors are open and he can hear Gwaine grunting behind the cardboard package while another man pulls. He hears Arthur’s footsteps and turns around panting exasperatedly.

“Final-holy fuck what happened to you?” he asks staring at him. It occurs to Arthur how he must look now with ratty clothes that haven’t been washed, and smelling god-awful while sporting an unshaved face.

“My girlfriend broke up with me the night I proposed”

“Sorry mate” 

“Yup”

Gwaine pokes his head from the back and shakes the hair out of his face. “Would you two idiots stop talking and damn well help me? We haven’t even gotten it to the apartment much less installed this waste of space”

“Don’t call my washing machine a waste of space” Arthur starts instinctively

“God knows he needs it” Merlin puts in scrunching up his nose

Arthur flips him off and Merlin laughs. Its an easy laugh, one that is contagious. Arthur feels a smile pushing its way through as he rolls his eyes at Merlin. Eventually the three of them get it into the apartment. Gwaine finds a blunt knife and the spend fifteen minutes cutting the cardboard box open. Merlin ends up tearing it at the side with his nails while Arthur goes around his too-big apartment looking for all of his clothes. They finally do get the machine out of the box and then just plug it in because as it turns out washing machines aren’t that complicated to start up. But then it turns out that all of his clothes need washing including the ones he was wearing so they strip him completely and drape him with a curtain.

Arthur goes to finally shower because he doesn’t want to ruin his curtain with his stench. When he comes out wearing the curtain like a cape, he sees Merlin going through his fridge. Without looking up he tosses Arthur a bottle of beer and grabs five other ones out and puts them on the floor.

“Gwaine went out to get chips and some dip because you have literally nothing in here but beer” he tells him just as Gwaine comes through the door.

They all sit on the floor in front of the T.V. Arthur contemplates turning it on but he wouldn’t be able to pay the bills so instead they all get up and take turns acting out ridiculous scenes while drunk. Merlin gets up and starts recanting the scenes from _Space Jam_ (”best movie of all time” “amen”). He looks so utterly stupid that Arthur snorts into his drink and Gwaine turns to him sharply. Then he remembers that she left, that his heart feels as if it has a migraine, that he has an empty space in his gut thats slowly expanding as time goes on.

"Bloody hell I’m starving. I’m going to order” Merlin says at around one in the morning and Arthur throws him a pile of menus from under the couch. He orders pizza with pineapples with them and Arthur is so appalled that he picks up every single pineapple and flings it at him. They start a pineapple war that escalates into a food war and eventually Gwaine puts an end to it by threatening to steal both of their wallets and ordering the most expensive things on every menu.

“You can steal my wallet you won’t find any money in there” Merlin tells him

It turns out Merlin is a painter who moved from his little village (”shut up people still say that word” “yeah in the medieval period”) to the city because he wanted to draw something that wasn’t just houses and little humble people. Arthur tells Merlin that hes an aspiring writer but since he isn’t discovered yet he works at a store three blocks away that probably will fire him the second he steps foot there. Gwaine says that the two of them were destined to find each other like Romeo and Juliet just without the suicide part. When Arthur asks why Gwaine rolls his eyes and sits up from the bed saying that its because Merlin is an artist, Arthur a writer and therefore they are each other muses. He says all of that as if its the most obvious thing in the world.

At three a.m. Gwaine falls asleep on the bed and Merlin returns to his apartment. Arthur sits against the couch staring at his plain blue notebook that she gave to him on their seventh anniversary. He picks it up and goes the last thing he wrote. Its half a sentence, something great that he was planning on writing that would have completely changed the plot of the story but now he couldn’t remember how to spell the world ‘lavender’. He shuts it and goes to sleep on the pile of bubble wrap from the washing machine.

The next day Arthur forces himself to get up and go to work because after last night he could only find one bill that was actually Gwaine’s. At the store everyone stares at him for three seconds before resuming their activities. The manager comes around from the back and claps his back, welcoming him back. Vaguely Arthur realizes that Elyan and Gwaine must have come down and explained it to his manager and his heart swells up because his friends were truly the most wonderful thing in his life. He doesn’t say anything like that to them but when he comes back to his apartment and sees Elyan hunched over some student’s paper, his brow furrowed and Gwaine on the floor, legs spread out as he charts the stars, Arthur feels the empty space in his gut lessen slightly. He brings out a piece of cake he stole from his store and puts in front of them without saying a word. Gwaine looks up and meets his eye nodding while Elyan thanks him and goes back to marking up the paper. 

Merlin comes around and sees the two paper plates with cake crumbs on it and exaggerates betrayal. Elyan throws a pillow at him and tells him to shut up. Merlin steals the pillow because he claims to not have any in his apartment. Then he comes around and steals half of Arthur’s bowls and then some of his shampoo and everything on his couch but the actual frame of it.

“What the hell do you have at your place?” Arthur asks him when Merlin returns in his fifth trip for oreos. 

“Not much being an undiscovered artist isn’t the most well paying job,” Merlin tells him. And as a point to prove it he drags Arthur over to his apartment and they stand in the empty space. He wasn’t wrong there was really nothing there. Just some pillows and a raggedy blanket on the floor which Arthur assumed was the bed.

He drags him back to his flat and gives him an extra mattress he had and a table. 

“I can’t believe I’m the one who got dumped and is depressed and still has their life more put together in this relationship” he says dragging the bed onto the floor.

Merlin grins, teeth and all. The next day he comes over to thank him and tell him how nice it is to not have to break into his neighbors apartment to steal shampoo. Arthur rolls his eyes at him and throws a stuffed animal at him. He ends up staying for the rest of the day because he doesn’t have a job yet and it was Arthur’s off-day. For dinner they call over Elyan who brings cupcakes made by a soccer mom from his school. He also brings half a basket full of dirty laundry because his doesn’t work.

Gwaine complains about the expenses of college and ends up stealing half his textbooks from other students. Arthur forces him to return them so he flips him off. Merlin tells them both to shut up because they were watching _The Get Down_ and Dizzee was about to kiss Thor. They all took bets on when it would happen and Elyan ended up winning so they gave him thirteen socks and half a cookie.

At night when everyone was sleeping Arthur goes around his apartment and puts away anything she left behind. A stray necklace she dropped at the foot of the bed, half a game she once bought for a rainy day, the ring he bought to propose, pictures of them together. Like one with them on top of a mountain. He had hated every second of it but she looked so happy that it felt as if there was a sun in her that was lighting up the world. Or another where they were at a fancy party, her in that dark purple blue dress that made him want her in a filthy and grimey thing hidden under his shirt, kissing her in a broom closet leaving marks on any part of her bare skin. And God he wanted her, he missed her so much and Arthur felt his hands shaking as his vision blurred. He dropped the picture and left the room.

Merlin sits up from his spot on the floor and stares at him hard. He pats the spot next to him and Arthur stumbles to sit down his head leaning on Merlin’s.

“You loved her that much?”

“Since I was fifteen and at the Halloween dance”

Merlin's quiet for a moment and Arthur thinks that hes scared him. But then in a quiet voice he asks “Whats it like? To be in love”

Arthur sits up and looks at him in the dark. He can make out his silhouette in the dark, his eyes focusing on him completely unwavering. He looks too small for the world all of a sudden, more tired and scared and hes falling apart in so many ways.

“My heart knew she was in the building before my mind did. She was present in everything, her hair and eyes stealing the suns rays. I wanted her in the same way that the astronauts boots want the moon and I wanted to be that person that wakes her up happy. I wanted to build her a castle with statues and write a thousand stories about the single strand in her eyebrow.”

Merlin nods and tells him that he was going to use that for inspiration in one of his paintings. Arthur smiles and wonders if he has now officially Made It. Merlin looks at him very seriously and tells him he has indeed so Arthur makes a huge dramatic deal of calling his father to tell him the news. He yells at Arthur to never call him at 4:32 in the morning ever again and Merlin rolls around the floor laughing as Arthur calls him an ass.

And then its like someone took a large bucket of paint and dumped it all over Arthur’s life. Which doesn’t make much sense because Merlin’s the artist not him but everywhere he goes he sees life. Merlin comes over nearly every hour to rant about the expenses of having an apartment, the people in 5B having such loud sex after arguing for an hour, about the lack of cooperation from his paintings. He never lets them see any of his paintings so Arthur has to go out and buy each and every single one. He doesn’t actually have to but a part of him wants to. He wants to understand Merlin whos like a lock that needs to be hacked.

Gwaine tells Arthur to paint his room so they push everything out. They paint the walls a shade between dark blue and black and Merlin spends thirteen days creating stars in the ceiling. Gwaine charts out the constellations and Merlin spends five hours figuring out which would go where then changing his mind. Arthur buys them all drinks when they’re finally finished because it means that his bed won’t be next to the toaster anymore. Merlin and Elyan end up in an arm wrestling competition but both of them get so drunk they name each strand of hair on Merlin’s left arm.

Arthur tells him about his sister and how she left without even raising a brow and how he misses her everyday of his life. He tells her about his father who can’t look at him anymore and his mother who died giving birth to him. Merlin tells him of his father abandoning them and his mother dying, leaving him as an orphan with no name. He tells Arthur that he loved running down slides, and that he was the best kid at swinging in his entire 3rd grade class. Arthur challenges him to a competition and intentionally loses to see him smile.

Suddenly its been eight months and he isn’t thinking about her everyday. He remembers when she was everything to him. Hes known her since they were born and loved her for nearly half his life and he hadn’t even drunk texted her in over half a year. He used to go to stores and pick out thinks he thought she would life, he picked up flowers for her weekly and wrote stories about her. Now he doesn’t even know if she still wears the same perfume or who she was dating. He wonders if he’ll just forget about her and when he asks Merlin he shakes his head at Arthur. 

“It was real, and you’ll always love her. But that doesn’t mean you’ll obsess over her every second. You’ll love others” he says simply

That sounds too romantic and deep to be said from Merlin so he turns on the T.V and ignores the little skip in his stomach when he accidentally brushes hands with Merlin’s. But then hes laying awake at night thinking about how lovely he is. Hes so present in every room, colour and life spilling out of him like a waterfall. Whenever Arthur discovers something new he wants Merlin’s opinion on it first and against his will has a love of painting and art.

Gwaine finds out and texts him famous paintings at night with fifteen texts of analysis. Arthur refuses to talk to him for two days but finally cracks when he wants crappy beer. They watch old videos of the Grammys and throw spitballs at anyone they don’t like. 

Arthur quits his job to pursue writing officially and Merlin drags him out to pubs to celebrate. Then Merlin steals a pen from behind the bar and three napkins and forces him to write. The next morning Arthur can’t read whatever chicken scratch he wrote and hes fairly certain he has ink poisoning. But none of them go to the hospital because doctors are expensive and they’re all poor as shit so instead they look up symptoms on WebMD. They all get convinced that Arthur’s dying so hold a fake funeral where Arthur actually cries and Merlin loses all the petals to all of his flowers. 

Arthur goes home around September 7th because thats the day Morgana left and he always goes home for that day. But then it doesn’t feel right because usually _she_ is with him, squeezing his hand, pressing a kiss onto his temple, taking over the house for the day because neither he and his dad could. So he drives back to his apartment early and goes into Merlin’s apartment and gets drunk. When Merlin comes back he finds Arthur talking to a moth on the window sill about the history of mugs and he can’t help but laugh and record it for future blackmail.

They go to museums together because even though Merlin has been living in the city for a little over a year hes never gone out and Arthur finds that to be the equivalent of stealing peanut butter. They get to one where its all hazy colors not quite forming a picture. 

“I hate art like that. It isn’t real its just colors. Any two-year old can do that” Merlin says his eyes wandering to the other paintings with solid drawings on them

“I don’t know I kinda like it”

“C’mon thats basic stuff. I was doing that in my first year of primary school”

Arthur shrugs, “Yeah maybe. But I think its a lot harder to paint a feeling”

Merlin grows quiet at that and they shuffle around to see the rest. They go home and throw popcorn at each other instead of watching whatever show was on. 

He writes about love and heartbreak and the process. He writes about vampires loving and fairies dying. He writes about animals taking over space and about artists taking over writers life. He writes in his journal for hours at a time and then throws it at the floor to scream into a pillow. Merlin sits across from him painting and then hiding it, then going back to fix it.

They go to see the new Disney movie on Arthur’s birthday and when they come back Gwaine and Elyan are at his house having already started a party. At night Merlin puts his head on Arthur’s stomach and makes every time he breathes it tickles Arthur so they both giggle quietly.

“I made you something for your birthday by the way”

“Aw you shouldn’t have” Arthur grins into the dark

“I really shouldn’t”

“Shut up and give it to me”

Merlin gets up and they step over the drunk sleeping bodies to the corner of his room. A canvas leans against the wall, covered by the white sheet with colors splattered at every direction. Merlin turns it around, the sheet falling out and Arthur sees hazy colors making up a scene. Hes sitting on the floor, Gwaine falling over himself laughing at some stupid joke while Elyan seems to be talking to a fish. Arthur wonders when this was happening and he feels the space in his gut leave him completely. He turns into an eight year old boy who is longing to have something he can’t have.

“Do you like it?”

“Love it”

Merlin grins in the darkness and Arthur decides right then and there that he wants to live in that moment forever. They hang up the painting and go back to their spot on the floor and Arthur keeps turning to look at the haze.

It dawns upon Arthur that he needs to actually start to write something more concrete instead of hazy things with no plot. He steals all of Merlin’s pens and chews on them in between words. Sometimes he becomes a silent cat and just sits in his apartment for days. Merlin learns to work around him, making sure to feed him once in a while. When Arthur can’t figure out his next scene he reads what hes written out loud to Merlin who yells at him about the lack of tall people in his story, and tells him to add in a casual dragon for no reason.

After a week Merlin moves away his papers and grabs his hand. Arthur stares at the blue rivers crawling under his skin and feels the urge to trace each and every single one of them.

“You need a break Arthur” Merlin tells him and makes him go out for fifteen minutes to McDonalds.

Then when they return Arthur claims hes lost his train of thought so Merlin tells him to grab his things and meet him outside in a few minutes. They go back outside, to a park where Merlin sets up a picnic. He eats strawberries while Arthur writes for a while and then gets into a competition with him to see who can catch the most nuts in their mouth. 

The two of them start to go everywhere, to the most obscure places so Arthur can write because now he has deadlines. Merlin leans against his back and reads over his shoulder making comments or telling him to take a nap for seventeen minutes. He writes the book while waiting for Merlin to figure out which ice cream he wanted in the store. He writes the book on top of the roof of someones house until they see the two of them and call the police. They both run away as fast as they can holding paces of his book while laughing wildly in the car. He writes the book when watching the sunset while Merlin paints on a canvas. It occurs to him that Merlin is exactly what an artist looks like and has the aesthetic to be one. When he tells him that Merlin hits him over the head with a paintbrush.

Arthur goes to look for publishing companies. One of them wants him and when he finds out he screams and then Merlin screams and then Gwaine and Elyan and they’re all screaming. He has one more chapter to finish and just as they come home he realizes he has no idea how to end it. He tells Merlin when they flick open the light at his apartment.

“I love you”

“What?” he asks his heart spilling in between his ribs. Suddenly hes all too aware of the blood running around in his body.

“End your story with I love you. Make it a feeling”

And then just like that his story is done, is published and he has money for the first time in forever. The night before his book is released hes sitting at the foot of his bed with Merlin and he thinks back to the night when she left him. He thinks back to the fact that he won’t exist but people would know who he was and what his favourite ice cream flavor was. And then it becomes clear to him that that doesn’t matter because he has Elyan, Gwaine and Merlin. That he could live off of their love forever and be a king with them.

**Author's Note:**

> [yell at me here](http://www.isabellarosaline.tumblr.com)


End file.
